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Viking Archaeology, Sagas, and Interdisciplinary Research in Iceland’S Mosfell Valley

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Viking Archaeology, Sagas, and Interdisciplinary Research in Iceland’S Mosfell Valley RESEARCH IN ACTION Report from the Field Viking Archaeology, Sagas, and Interdisciplinary Research in Iceland’s Mosfell Valley Jesse Byock 1 and Davide Zori 2 This article is dedicated to the memory of Phillip Walker, By applying different sources and research our friend, University of California colleague, and co- techniques—archaeological, scientific, and human- director of the Mosfell Archaeological Project istic—MAP is constructing a picture of habitation and environmental change in the Mosfell Valley over Working in the glaciated and once-wooded Mosfell the course of the Old Icelandic Free State, a Viking Valley (Mosfellsdalur) in southwestern Iceland, the Age parliamentary state that continued until the Mosfell Archaeological Project (MAP) is unearth- mid-thirteenth century (Fig. 1; Byock 2001). MAP’s ing the prehistory and early settlement history of that region during the Viking Age (ninth to eleventh century C.E.).3 This article offers an overview of 1 Scandinavian Section, UCLA and Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, MAP’s recent archaeological research at the farm of UCLA. Hrísbrú in the valley. This site was the home of the 2 UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies; Icelandic Centre Mosfell chieftains (the Mosfellsdælingar, “the People for Research (Rannís). of Mosfell’s Dale”), a powerful Viking Age family 3 The Mosfell Archaeology Project (MAP) is directed by Jesse Byock, UCLA professor of Old Norse and Archaeology. MAP’s field director is of leaders, warriors, farmers, and legal specialists. Davide Zori, UCLA Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Ph.D., 2010. A joint Within the context of MAP’s findings, this article Icelandic and American project, MAP is interdisciplinary and international considers the relationship between modern archaeo- with archaeologists, scholars, and students from different countries and universities. For further information, see the forthcoming book, Viking logical methods and Iceland’s medieval writings, Archaeology in Iceland: The Mosfell Archaeological Project, ed. Davide Zori especially the family sagas. and Jesse Byock (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2014). 124 | backdirt 2013 Figure 1. Map of the Mosfell Valley region. The red squares show the locations of MAP’s excavation and survey sites. The entrance to the valley lies between Mosfell Mountain to the north and Helgafell Mountain to the south. The farmstead of Hrísbrú sits on the lower slopes of Mosfell Mountain from where it controlled the entrance to the valley and looked down on the Viking Age port at Skiphóll (Ship Knoll) in Leiruvogur Bay. excavations at Hrísbrú have revealed a large long- house, a timber/stave church from the conversion- age transition from paganism (ca. 1000 C.E.), an early graveyard with mixed pagan and Christian attributes, and a pagan cremation burial site (Figs. 2, 3, and 4). Together these exceptionally well-preserved remains form the core features of a chieftain’s high-status farmstead. At this time, we are research- ing and excavating fourteen sites throughout the valley (see Fig. 1). These excavations are providing a detailed picture of Viking Age life in Iceland and in the North Atlantic. The sites include monumen- tal stone ship settings—stones arrayed to form the outline of a ship—at the inland end of the valley (Fig. 5), and a Viking Age port at the valley’s coastal Figure 2. The modern farm of Hrísbrú showing the locations of mouth at Leiruvogur Bay, where the rivers of the the major excavation areas of Kirkjuhóll (Church Knoll), Hulduhóll valley flow into the sea.4 The extensive assemblage of (Elven Hill), and the tún (the ancient homefield) mentioned in this sites in the Mosfell Valley forms a powerful political, article. The old road leading past Hrísbrú lay between the Christian religious, and governmental landscape. church on one side and the pagan burial mound on the other. The Mosfell Valley is the type of Icelandic community of the Viking Age that produced the Icelandic sagas, one of the world’s great bodies of 4 Leiruvogur, “Tidal Flats Bay,” is sometimes spelled “Leirvogur” and may also be translated as “Clay Bay.” Both translations make sense as the bay is still today both clayey and muddy. backdirt 2013 | 125 Figure 3. Site plan of the excavated Viking Age chieftain’s farm at Hrísbrú. The map shows the Viking Age longhouse and the conversion- era church (ca. C.E. 1000) with a surrounding burial yard. literature. Most archaeologists working in Iceland roads, burials, agricultural enclosures, and port today avoid the sagas, dismissing them as fictitious facilities before they are destroyed by modern writings. We take a different view. We employ construction. Iceland’s medieval writings as one of many datasets MAP is highly interdisciplinary in its archaeolog- in our excavations, and the archaeological remains ical approach, using the tools of archaeology, history, that we are excavating in the Mosfell Valley appear anthropology, forensics, environmental sciences, to verify our method. Together, the written medieval and saga studies in a coordinated methodology. We sources and the archaeological discoveries offer new call our research framework Valley System Archae- information about Iceland’s earliest past and about ology, a concept we developed and which we find the Viking Age in general. well-suited to Viking and North Atlantic archaeology. MAP is also an example of archaeology in transi- Guided by this framework, we combine analyses of tion. When we started in 1995, the valley was rural. the Mosfell Valley’s cultural, scientific, and envi- It lay beyond the outskirts of Reykjavík, Iceland’s ronmental landscapes from the coastal regions at capital. But the situation has changed: the Mosfell the western lowland mouth of the valley up into the Valley is rapidly becoming part of sprawling greater highland heaths that rise at the valley’s eastern end. Reykjavík, and the Viking Age sites are now threat- The Mosfell region is a suitable test case for the ened by urban development. Since we started our utility of the Valley System concept. The valley, the excavations, a large area of the Viking port area at surrounding highlands, and the lowland coastal Leiruvogur Bay has been turned into paved housing areas are an interlocking system of natural and man- subsections. Where earlier we herded horses and made components. The area encapsulates the major sheep off our sites, we now compete with bulldoz- ecologies of Iceland: coastal, riverine, and highlands ers and larger machinery. With the swift advance of with volcanic soil; it contains rich archaeological urbanization, our task is to find and document the heritage, connected to a broad collection of oral archaeological remains of turf buildings, ancient narrative and medieval writings. The time-frame of MAP’s research begins with Iceland’s earliest 126 | backdirt 2013 RESEARCH IN ACTION Figure 4. Architectural drawing of the buildings at Hrísbrú in the Mosfell Valley reconstructed from the MAP site plans. The church, which is of tim- ber/stave construction, is approximately 8 meters from the turf-clad longhouse. Figure 5. A ship setting found in the Mosfell Valley. Such man-made stone settings arrayed in the shapes of ships are widely distributed throughout mainland Scandinavia and are often connected with the rituals of death. This is the first such monument to be found in Iceland. The ship setting, 30 meters long and 10 meters wide, is made up of 69 laid stones. backdirt 2013 | 127 locate turf structures (Bathurst et al. 2010). We are analyzing architectural techniques (Byock and Zori in press); trade and exchange as witnessed by the artifact record (Hansen et al. in press); the produc- tion, forms, and uses of iron (Zori 2007); usage of smaller activity areas, such as the sel or summer dairy stations; roads and paths (Connors in press); the intra-site artifact distribution patterns in a Viking longhouse (Milek et al. in press); and the role of feasting in an environmentally marginal North Atlantic society (Zori et al. 2013). MAP’s archaeological findings, including our artifact collection, indicate that the region is cultur- ally representative of early Iceland. The community that evolved in the Mosfell Valley was in many ways a self-contained social and economic unit. It was also connected to the rest of Iceland through a Figure 6. Four “eye beads,” originally from the eastern shores of network of roads. Two major east–west roads lead the Caspian Sea, were found hidden in a pit dug in the floor of the Hrísbrú longhouse. More than 30 beads were found within the through the valley, one on the north slopes of the longhouse, the largest number of such finds recovered within an valley and the other on the south side. These routes Icelandic longhouse of the Viking Age. Beads were valuable trade connect into major north-south routes. They also goods in the Viking Age, and these finds are consistent with the lead to nearby Thingvellir (the “thing or assembly wealth and status of the inhabitants of the Hrísbrú farmstead. plains”), the meeting place of the annual Viking Age parliament, the Althing, thirty kilometers (about eighteen miles) to the east of the Mosfell Valley. The artifacts, including imported glass beads from ninth-century settlement period, called the landnám the Mediterranean and Central Asia, show that the or “landtaking,” when Norse and Celtic settlers first Mosfell Valley was also in contact with the inter- sailed from northern Europe to uninhabited Iceland. national trade and travel of the Viking Age (Fig. The time frame of our current excavations continues 6). Leiruvogur Port at the western mouth of the through the transformation from paganism to Chris- valley provided commercial and cultural contact tianity and into the thirteenth century C.E. with the larger Scandinavian and European worlds. The specialists on the MAP team explore, among The connections went possibly as far as Constan- other subjects, local power structures in wider tinople (connected historically to Scandinavia and Iceland contexts (Byock in press; Byock and Zori in Iceland through the Varangian Guard, the imperial press); the changes over time in subsistence strate- bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor, composed of gies (Erlendsson et al.
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